The present invention relates to seat supporting assemblies which provide resilient support for seats used in recreational vehicles, motorcycles and the like.
In many of the prior art recreational vehicles such as motorcycles, the vehicle seat is rigidly supported by the vehicle frame and the only resilient support for the driver is provided by the seat per se, i.e., the springs provided within the seat. This arrangement is often inadequate to provide a sufficiently smooth ride.
Some other prior art motorcycles have provided resilient means for supporting the seat but these arrangements have also proved to have drawbacks. For example, a well known method of resiliently supporting a seat includes mounting the seat on the rearward end of a cantilevered generally horizontally extending bracket. The forward end of the bracket is pivotally mounted to the vehicle frame and the bracket is supported intermediate its length by a vertically extending coil spring assembly which serves to provide resilient support for the seat. Several drawbacks are inherent in such a system. For example, since the seat is pivotable about a pivot point located in front of the seat, during vertical oscillation of the seat, the rear portion of the seat will have greater vertical movement than the forward part of the seat. This drawback is accentuated in the event that the seat is sufficiently long to comfortably support two riders. If the seat is supported such that the forward portion of the seat has a sufficient vertical movement to provide a comfortable ride for the driver, the rear portion will have an undesirable amplitude of movement.
A further failure of the prior art is that no convenient means has been provided to effectively adjust the resiliency of the springs supporting the seat. The prior art has provided auxiliary supporting devices which can be added to support the seat but these devices are not adjustable to compensate for any variations in the weight of riders and passengers, and they are usually not conveniently added or removed. Thus, none of the prior art devices have provided a convenient and readily adjustable means for regulating the resilient effect of the springs to compensate for riders of different weights or two riders rather than just one.